This poor practitioner is called Tingtao — Wave-Listener. Eleventh year of cultivation at the ravine's bottom.
People ask what I cultivate. I say: listening. They laugh — what kind of cultivation is that? I say: you've lived your whole lives by your eyes, and eyes see only surfaces. Sound is different; sound is what things are inside. Wood has wood's voice, stone has stone's, water has water's. Listen long enough and, eyes shut, the whole ravine lives inside your ears.
Where the water falls into the deep pool, the sound has three layers. The surface goes huaaa — you hear that. The middle goes om — meditators hear that. And at the very bottom there's another: iron striking iron. Clang. Clang. Long silences between.
The bridge is under the water.
Chapter 1 of Journey to the West says it plainly: before Water Curtain Cave stands an iron-plank bridge, and the water beneath it pours through the stone apertures and hangs down, screening the cave mouth. You take that for a storyteller's invention. Eleven years of listening, and I'll tell you: nobody invents that accurately. Iron on iron is down there — muffled in high water, clear in low. The bridge is still there.
This plague year, the water's voice changed. Under the iron there's a new scraping, like something crawling on the bridge. I no longer dare go look. A cultivator's courage should be as small as possible — the bold often hear their own voice last.
Before you go down to the bottom, sit one incense stick with me. Do nothing. Listen. After one stick, decide whether you still want to descend. If you can't hear three layers, I advise you to turn back —
The ravine's bottom does not welcome the deaf.